This Year's Most Popular Blockbusters Urged Us to Consume the Wealthy Yet Again. We Still Aren't Listening.

An age-old theme runs through many of 2025's popular films. This concept which extends back in time to the days of the Little Tramp. In James Gunn’s *Superman*, the evil force is a envious, ruthless billionaire wielding his enormous resources to smear Earth's superhero icon while controlling world events to enrich himself. In *Jurassic World: Rebirth*, the antagonist is a privileged biotech mogul spending vast sums to trap the heroes into a monster-filled death trap for personal amusement. Within the animated sequel *Zootopia 2*, the antagonists are a family of extremely affluent lynxes who pilfered a well-meaning mother's altruistic invention and set her up for murder, purely for their financial benefit.

A Tradition of Cinematic Elite Villainy

Within the dystopian thriller *The Running Man*, a wealthy media magnate plays a rich antagonist operating a TV network that makes millions by preying upon and eliminating people suffering through abject destitution, while using deepfakes and a sophisticated media apparatus to portray them as avaricious, indolent, terrifying criminals. The Oz-based film *Wicked* doesn't highlight class division quite that directly, but its antagonists enjoy clear extravagance while preying upon and oppressing Oz's disadvantaged inhabitants, pushing them out of jobs and into bondage. The box-office champion *Ne Zha 2*, the year's highest-grossing movie, sets the resourceful people of a struggling farm town against condescending upper classes who live in lavish gleaming towers in the sky. Even, the agreeably goofy comedy reboot of *The Naked Gun* revolves around a billionaire's plot to cause planetary doom — for his own profit, naturally.

It is not particularly surprising in a series of movies presupposing that rich people have too much power, are devoid of conscience, and a bottomless, entitled desire for increased fortune. "Rich people are villains and everyday folks are heroes" as a concept stretches back to the dawn of cinema, with the Little Tramp's adventures pitting his always poor Little Tramp character against tycoons, bosses, and bumbling wealthy fools. Starting with the Mickey Rooney/Judy Garland "Let’s put on a show" films of the 1930s to the 1980s dance movies that revised a similar story for the era of the greedy, harmful tech-bro villain, the entire history of cinema is packed with "eat the rich" stories, which assume that wealth is contrary to basic human values, and celebrate the overthrowing, routing, and sometimes destruction of elite figures.

The Outlet That Fails to Transform

Nevertheless, inexplicably, we never actually eating the rich. Every time elected officials respond to a new mass shooting event by blaming violent video games, I feel exasperated, because if people actually were that impressionable — if repeated viewing to an idea via media was enough to allow it to permeate the societal mindset — surely American society would not persistently worship billionaires. Still the news makes it obvious regularly that a frightening percentage of Americans instinctively equate riches with intelligence and value to society, even after decades of history's most popular movies promoting the opposite.

If anything, it seems like the constant stream of anti-wealth storylines in American cinema has created a relief valve that hinders substantive reform. Given a steady diet of mostly uplifting stories where the hero prevails, while the billionaires are neutralized and shamed, everyone can finish the film content about justice being served. These films are like ethical parables, suggesting that the system works, and that determined protagonists will identify any corrupt individuals among the largely industrious, moral, worthy wealthy who pulled themselves up by their bootstraps.

A Sharper Tone in 2025

Even though 2025's movies do not break new ground in that regard, they do follow some modern developments among class warfare stories: They’re getting more enraged, sharper, more direct, and observably more lethal. It’s rarely enough nowadays to see rich people be taught a lesson about modesty, like in 1941's *Sullivan's Travels*, or forfeit their fortune to the people they oppressed, like in 1983's *Trading Places*. In 2025, avaricious, malicious rich individuals were killed by mythological beasts (*Death of a Unicorn*) and eaten by a giant mutant dinosaur (*Jurassic World: Rebirth*). They were destroyed on a alien world (*Mickey 17*) and executed at close range on a broadcast (*The Running Man*). They were murdered with a improvised weapon (*Companion*) and assaulted fatally by an rising rival (*Him*).

"Very few of 2025’s ultra-rich villains get the hauled off to jail finale, likely due to it’s become so apparent that rich people operate under a separate justice system, and are very likely to purchase their freedom."

The "off to face justice" ending no longer satisfies anymore. Rather, these villains are likely to die at the end of their movies, often in especially grotesque, ironic ways.

Key Outliers

There are exceptions, undoubtedly. Superman's arch-nemesis in *Superman* is simply humiliated, exposed, and sent to prison. Sinful schemer Julian Dillinger in *Tron: Ares* winds up exiled to the virtual grid, a setup that obviously being saved for possible sequels. Korda in Wes Anderson's *The Phoenician Scheme* forfeits all his money and is redeemed as a person. The antagonist family members in *Zootopia 2* are unmasked as frauds and deceivers, but they don’t meet|avoid